


The Longest Night

by nicedress



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Arachnophobia, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Buried Alive, Claustrophobia, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus Hargreeves-centric, Look this is just really dark, Paranoia, Proceed with caution, Psychological Horror, but not as much as he deserves, maybe a little bit of comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:00:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29058651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicedress/pseuds/nicedress
Summary: He’s trapped—in some sort of box,he’s trapped—and he lets out a sound somewhere between a sob and a delirious laugh, banging on the low ceiling.He can’t remember how he got here. He can’t rememberanything. His mind scrambles backward, retracing his steps, trying to follow the thread that ended here: with Dad locking him in a box as another fucked up experiment, a new way to force him to face the dead.Or: Klaus wakes up in his own grave.
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2131974
Comments: 38
Kudos: 145
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	The Longest Night

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Buried Alive prompt for my [Bad Things Happen Bingo card](https://nicedress.tumblr.com/post/641671454992252928/my-card-for-bad-things-happen-bingo). 
> 
> It’s been a while since I’ve tried to write something truly unsettling, so?? I hope I accomplished that?? 
> 
> Thanks as always to the LOML for reading over this even though it’s not her cup of tea, and to [Spence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForestDivinity/) for enabling me.

It’s dark when Klaus opens his eyes.

He blinks once. Twice. Squeezes his eyes shut and forces them back open, squinting into the darkness for a glimmer of light. 

There isn’t one. 

“Dad?” he calls. His voice sounds too close, heavy and somehow muted, pressing like cotton in his ears. 

He can’t be in the mausoleum. Not again. It’s too dark, and even on moonless nights, Klaus could always make out the shapes around him: the hard edges of elegantly carved tombs, the pitch-black niches in the wall where the urns reflect fragments of pale light. 

He’s never given a pillow on those nights—not even one as thin and useless as the one on which his head currently rests.

Something uneasy squirms in his chest, settling heavily in his lungs. “ _Dad?_ ” 

Klaus pushes himself up and his forehead thuds against something hard, knocking him back onto the pillow with a dull throb of pain that rattles through his teeth. He can feel his breath coming faster, puffing back hotly in his face, trapped by the barrier just inches above him. 

He shoves against it, his hands slipping against silky fabric. It doesn’t move, heavy and unyielding as stone. Klaus bangs a fist against it. “Dad! What’s going on?” 

Faint, whispery laugher gusts around him—the only evidence of the ghosts he can’t see. 

A hand shoots out on impulse, colliding with a wall on his right, inches away from his shoulder. He feels toward his left, the heavy feeling in his chest going cold with panic when he touches another wall.

He can’t move.

He can’t fully extend his arms in either direction.

He’s trapped—in some sort of box, _he’s trapped_ —and he lets out a sound somewhere between a sob and a delirious laugh, banging on the low ceiling. 

He can’t remember how he got here. He can’t remember _anything_. His mind scrambles backward, retracing his steps, trying to follow the thread that ended here: with Dad locking him in a box as another fucked up experiment, a new way to force him to face the dead.

A chill races down his spine, his heart hammering in his chest. This feels like a coffin. Everything about this—the narrow walls, the silk, the useless pillow.

The next sound that rips out of him is a scream. He thrashes against the walls, banging his fists against them, tearing at the fabric. “Dad, let me out! Please let me out!”

How long will Dad leave him here? He's never locked him in the mausoleum for more than a night—this was just taking it a step further, a step crueler. Klaus can’t survive eight hours of this, _he can’t_ —not with the way the panic is tearing through him like a hurricane, ripping him apart from the inside out, a flag shredded in the wind.

He claws against the ceiling like an animal, the edge of a nail snagging on a loose thread and ripping it. The fabric sags and catches with his breath, pulled in by a sharp inhale, suctioning against him.

He can't breathe, the fabric pressing like a hand over his mouth, and Klaus goes numb with panic. He can hardly feel his elbows and knees slamming against the walls as he fights with the fabric that seems to cling to him on its own accord, closing his airway, making his lungs go tight.

He catches the fabric in his hands, yanks it down with a harsh ripping sound that he can feel in his chest. Klaus shoves it aside, slapping it away from him as if it was on fire, shuddering sobs wrenching out of him between each frenzied inhale.

_Why?_

Maybe this would be easier to endure if he could only remember how he got here.

What did he do wrong? What made Dad change his mind, decide to try something other than the mausoleum? How long has he been here? How much longer does he have left? 

He can’t even see if the sun is rising, doesn’t know how much time has passed since he woke up. Maybe seconds, maybe hours. Everything feels hazy and far away, swirling past like water down a drain.

It’s too real at the same time. Too harsh, every detail standing out like a vivid nightmare: the smooth scratch of the lining against his hands and the back of his neck, the moist heat of his breath, the cool touch of damp eyelashes against his skin every time he blinks.

He remembers waking up this morning. He remembers going downstairs for breakfast with the others, rolling a joint under the table as Mom put on a recording of the Improvised Munitions Handbook.

They had training after breakfast, and Klaus had used one of his designated bathroom breaks to smoke the joint he’d kept carefully hidden all morning, something to look forward to, something to make all of this seem worth it. 

It gets blurry after that, and Klaus doesn’t think it’s because of the weed. 

Training had been cut short for some reason. A mission, maybe. He remembers being in the car, one shoulder pressed against Five’s, the other against Allison—the most physical contact they were ever allowed to have. He remembers being warm, remembers thinking that the only people in the world he actually cared about were all right there in the car with him, and he didn’t feel like putting his life on the line for anyone else.

After that—nothing. It’s empty, his memories ripped out like pages from a book. Something had to have happened, or he wouldn’t be getting punished like this. 

He just has to wait until morning. He can do it. He’s done it before—so many times he can hardly keep track. Maybe it will be better this way, here in the dark, where there’s less room for ghosts to crowd in around him.

He lays there for what feels like hours, waiting, staring into the darkness. It’s not long before the anxiety creeps in again, twisting in his stomach and burning in his eyes. What if they leave him here? What if no one ever comes for him? 

What if they forget about him?

The last thought hurts the most. He’s the most useless person in the house—he’s no one’s favorite, always pushed aside on missions, not important enough to be anything other than the lookout.

It’s too easy to imagine no one even noticing he’s gone.

He has to get out of here. 

“ _Dad!_ ” It explodes out of him, his voice shattering in his throat, and he claws at the ceiling of the casket. He doesn’t know what it’s made of—it doesn’t feel like metal or stone. It’s slightly rough where the lining had been, sinewy lines that might be wood grain. If it’s wood, maybe he at least has a chance of breaking free.

He curls his fingers, scraping his nails against the surface for something to latch onto, dust and debris flecking sharply against his cheeks. A subconscious part of him knows this won’t work, knows that the wood would be too thick to reasonably break through, but he can’t stop once he’s started.

His fingertips land in a crevice and he digs his nails into it, drags them down. His hands slip and he feels his nails snap backward before the pain hits, searing through his fingers. He clutches his hands to his chest, his middle and ring fingers throbbing in time with his racing heart, and he lets himself cry.

He’s going to die down here.

Dad will let him out in the morning.

How long has it been? 

His head is aching, pain clamped around it like a vice, screwing in tighter and building pressure behind his eyes. He jerks to the side and vomits, bile burning his throat, the pain in his head flaring white.

It’s dark when Klaus opens his eyes.

He must have fallen asleep sometime after he’d been sick, his back pressed against the edge of the coffin to stay as far away from the vomit as possible. The air is rank and heavy, and Klaus’s stomach churns in warning. He hates himself for not having enough control over his body—it’s worse knowing Dad will berate him for it, too.

He deserves to be trapped in a box with nothing but the smell of vomit and the pain in his fingers—that’s what Dad will have him believe. Maybe he’s right. Klaus only added to his own suffering.

“Please, Dad,” he tries again. His voice is raw, scratching in his throat like glass.

He can hear the ghosts again, whispering his name, laughing at him. He gets the joke now—alive or not, he’s no better than any of them.

He wonders if he’s underground. It hardly seems worth the effort to dig a hole big enough to bury a casket for one night, but Dad isn’t one to cut corners. If he wanted Klaus to have the full death experience, then he would have arranged for it.

The thought stirs the feral panic in him again, and Klaus holds his breath, tries his best to fight it back. He can’t get out—the fact that he even tried might earn him another night locked up like this. 

He can’t handle another night.

This one has already seemed to last for days. He can already smell himself—the damp heat trapped beneath his arms, heady and strong, the air around him thick and moist. His scalp is cold, his hair clumped into sweaty strings. 

The first thing he’s going to do when he gets out of here is take a bath. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine the warmth of the water around him, the soft herbal scent of the bubbles, and his breath hitches around a sob. The memory of it feels so far away, wedged in his heart like a splinter. 

He wants to go home—he _misses_ home, which is stupid because he’s only been away for a few hours at most. It doesn’t make it hurt any less, doesn’t keep the memory of his family from aching in his chest.

He wants to feel Mom’s arms around him, cool and hard and lifeless, and breathe in her perfume. He wants Allison to paint his nails, holding his hand delicately in her own, his fingers curved over hers as if he were royalty. He wants Diego to ruffle his hair when they pass each other in the hallway, heavy and fond. He wants Vanya to smile at him at the table, wants to wash the blood off of Ben’s face after he unleashes the Horror. He doesn’t remember doing it after their last mission, and he doesn’t know if anyone else would have helped Ben in his place. 

He wants to wrestle with Luther, if only because it takes his breath away and makes something flip inside him when he’s inevitably pinned down. He wants to sit with Five afterward, shoulder-to-shoulder, and feel like he belongs somewhere for once.

He even wants Dad to criticize him, just to hear a voice other than his own, the barely-there murmur that he hardly remembers starting, thoughts slipping through his mind and falling out of his mouth. It’s better than listening to his own breath, catching and stuttering like an old car, and it drowns out the sound of the blood that rushes through his ears with each erratic beat of his heart. 

He twists his fingers together and thinks of Mom’s cross-stitching, his fingers hooked in little X shapes, curled close near his chin. He thinks it might look pretty, and he imagines his fingers in green thread, locking together to make the stem of a flower. He doesn’t have enough fingers to make the petals, and the realization hurts, his breath hitching like he's going to cry.

Maybe he never stopped. 

He doesn’t know if tears are coming out anymore. His face is drenched in sweat so it’s impossible to tell, but the insides of his lids feel like sandpaper dragging over his eyes, the rough grit scraping against his corneas. He imagines them ripping, bleeding, and maybe that’s the wetness he feels on his face.

Maybe it’s not dark at all and he lost his vision somehow—maybe that’s why he can’t remember the mission. Something happened, he got injured; some kind of blow to the head that damaged his eyes along with his memory.

Maybe he’s not in a coffin. Maybe he’s somewhere nice, at home in his bed. He traces his fingers along the wall and tries to picture himself in his room, but it’s the lining that throws him off, shatters the illusion. He imagines the infirmary instead, a soft barrier around the sides of the bed to keep him from falling.

It’s almost real. The harsh smell of antiseptic burns in the back of his nose, machines pulsing steadily under the healing silence.

Mom’s high heels tap along the tile floor, echoing through the room, and Klaus calls to her, his voice a broken rasp.

She doesn’t answer.

“ _Mom_.” It’s almost a cry, his throat going tight. Whatever pain medicine she’d given him has worn off entirely, the injuries he’s not fully aware of sending pulses of pain through his veins. “Mom, please...”

The footsteps fade away and Klaus is alone again, cold despite the stifling heat pressing in around him. Maybe she’s just gone to get him something to eat; it feels like he hasn’t eaten in ages, his stomach crushed in on itself, too empty. 

That must mean it’s almost morning, almost time for breakfast. He knows he was waiting for morning for some reason, but it’s escaping him, the memory swirling away with the minutes and hours and days that circled down the drain in a miniature whirlpool.

He always likes to sit in the bath until it drains completely, waiting for the whirlpool to reach upward like a ribbon caught in the breeze, flickering like a candle flame until it fully forms. It only lasts for a moment, growing wider like a gaping maw until the last of the water is sucked out of the tub with a final, desolate gurgle. 

He can feel it in his stomach, an almost painful growl.

It will be morning soon. 

It’s dark when Klaus opens his eyes.

It’s dark and he can’t take it anymore, he can’t, he can’t, _he can’t_ —

He can hear someone screaming far away as he slams himself against the low ceiling, pushing against it with his shoulders, his forearms, his head—anything that will reach. He presses his back against the floor, draws his knees toward his chest, tries his best to brace his feet against the ceiling. Once he’s in a good, sturdy position, he pushes with all the strength he has left, lets his muscles relax, and then forces his legs up even harder. 

Something cracks, rips through small space like thunder, and pain flashes through his right leg. This time he knows it’s him screaming—in frustration, in agony, sobs ripping out of him as he fights against his position, struggling to uncurl himself, his knees pressing too hard against his chest and pushing the air out of his lungs, but he’s stuck, he’s stuck, _he’s stuck_ —

It’s dark when Klaus opens his eyes.

He’s at the bottom of the stairs in the entry hall, one of Mom’s high heels still hanging onto his foot as pain radiates from his ankle to his knee, matching the pain that throbs in his jaw. 

He’s going to die here, he knows that. He’ll die before anyone can find him, and their last impression of him will be the family embarrassment dressed up in Mom’s clothes. 

His eyes hurt too much to allow himself to cry, shame burning in his face. All he wanted was to feel pretty, to look as beautiful and elegant as Mom does in her perfectly fitted dresses and spotless shoes. He always liked how long they made her legs look, always wanted to look like her, to be her. 

He could be a good mom, he thinks. A good wife, if nothing else. A good husband, as long as his wife didn’t mind him wearing her clothes. Maybe he could have his own. A closet full of beautiful dresses made of soft, silky fabric, a collection of high heels in every height and color. 

Dad finds him an eternity later, and Klaus can see his face in the darkness, the disgust etched into his features. It’s subtle—a lowered brow and a slightly curled lip—as if Klaus is nothing more than a piece of trash rotting on the floor. Maybe that’s all he's ever been.

“Unacceptable, Number Four.” 

It could have been so much worse.

It couldn’t have been any worse.

He wonders what it feels like to have a father that loves him, one who would see him broken and try to pick up the pieces, gently glue them back together. 

“Clean yourself up and get to the infirmary. Be ready for training this evening.” 

Dad steps over him, his shoe a breath away from Klaus’s cheekbone—Klaus can smell the leather, punctuated by the sharp tang of polish, and then he’s gone. Gone to do something more important than helping his son. 

_Unacceptable._

Klaus already knows that about himself, so it won’t matter if he lays here a little longer, lets his tears pool onto the cold tile, sealed against his face like a suction cup.

He doesn’t know who moves him, but there’s suddenly a hard, flat pillow beneath his cheek, the air thin and hot, his breath wheezing in his chest. Ghosts flicker at the edge of his vision, a strobe light through smoke, and his breath catches, breaks into a sob.

“Hey, relax,” Five says. It’s gentle—for Five anyway—the words accompanied by the cool relief of an ice pack against his cheek. “Don’t scream, alright? You’ll only hurt yourself more.”

Klaus wants to reply but he can’t move his jaw. A half-sob escapes him instead, his breath hissing between his teeth. 

“I’m right here,” Five says—but he’s not. When Klaus reaches for Five’s hand, his fingers collide with the fabric-lined wall. 

“Where?” he asks, a thin shriek of a whisper. 

“Right here.” Diego’s voice comes from somewhere behind him, and Klaus struggles to roll over, to move closer. 

He’s stopped by the wall of the coffin and he screams, claws at it until the lining tears, until his fingers go numb with pain, slipping through something hot and sticky. 

He screams Diego’s name, then Five’s, Ben’s and Allison’s and Luther’s, even Vanya’s, but no one answers him anymore. 

He’s alone here, underground with the dead, and the night drags on.

It’s dark when Klaus opens his eyes. 

He waits, he cries, he sleeps. 

He dreams about the sky, an infinite swath of the softest blue, wisps of pure white clouds. There are birds, silhouettes in the sunlight. Green grass with pretty pink flowers. 

He waits, staring up into the blackness.

He lets himself drift, sinking back into the peaceful, quiet place that never lets him stay. 

It’s dark when Klaus opens his eyes. 

He’s not alone anymore but he wishes that he was. He can feel it in the darkness—a presence that looms over his shoulder, close but not quite touching, an oppressive, heavy gaze weighing him down. 

There’s a sense of wrongness that doesn’t come with any ghost, a cold terror resting on his chest like a bowling ball, rolling upward to press into his throat. 

It’s dark, but he can’t look behind him because he’s afraid of what he’ll see.

He doesn’t believe in demons but maybe one came to him anyway, doesn’t believe in hell but maybe he’s there. He can’t run. He can't escape. All he can do is close his eyes and whimper “ _please, please, please_ ” while he waits for morning to come. 

There’s something evil underground, permeating through the dirt like poison, and it’s found him. Maybe it _is_ him, a bad seed buried deep and growing into something terrible, something deadly. 

He presses his hands over his eyes and pretends to be asleep, pretends to be dead, because maybe if he doesn’t acknowledge the horror waiting in the darkness it won’t touch him. 

Allison tells him dark colors suit him, holds up one eyeshadow shade to his face, then another, comparing them. 

“I don’t want dark,” Klaus tells her. He wants a pastel yellow, maybe. Pink or lavender. Something soft and kind; not too harsh, not too bright. 

She frowns, swirling a brush in the black pigment. “Dark is better for you, trust me.” 

“Please,” he tries, panic making his voice shake as hard as his hands. “I don’t want it. Please, I’ll be good, _I promise_ —”

He can’t handle the dark anymore, he never wants to be in the dark again. Dark reminds him of death, of the long nights in the mausoleum; Dad’s cruel voice and the cold stone beneath his back; the eyes that surround him, watching him, waiting for him. 

He should be used to the feeling of being watched. There were always Dad's cameras, the ghosts, the spiders in the mausoleum.

They always seemed to rebuild their webs in the corner where he liked to hide. He would never see it until he tried to sit, sticky threads clinging to his clothes and his hair as if they meant to trap him.

There are spiders here, too. They creep up the legs of his shorts, descend from the ceiling on thin strings of web, landing on his chest, his neck, his face—tickling over the shell of his ear and filling his head with the sound of muffled tapping, a million tiny raindrops splattering against an umbrella. 

He tries to scream but it’s a mistake, spiders rushing into the darkness of his mouth, prickly legs running over his tongue and the insides of his cheeks, writhing in his throat, his breath wheezing and twisting around them.

Klaus grasps at his neck, squeezes, tries to crush them from the outside. He only succeeds in making himself sick, his body forcing out a burning rush of bile through his mouth and nose and maybe his eyes, streaking down his cheeks like razor blades. 

He thrashes against the floor, rolling his weight onto the spiders beneath his clothes that itch and sting against his skin, rips out handfuls of hair to keep them from nesting there. That’s where they’re coming from, he realizes, and maybe they’ve been there all along—countless eggs laid during his nights in the mausoleum, hatching all at once. 

He bangs his head against the ceiling, again and again, screaming for help as the spiders overtake him and Allison tells him how pretty he looks in black. 

It’s dark when Klaus opens his eyes. 

It’s dark, and there’s nothing else left. Some part of him seems to have died, a hollow, aching feeling in his chest. 

He doesn’t remember the color of the sky. He tries to picture it in his mind but it looks unnatural, the blue too flat, too dark, and he forgets to imagine the sun. 

He can’t remember how long he’s been here, or why. 

Someone will let him out in the morning.

He just has to wait.

He just has to wait. 

It’s dark when Klaus opens his eyes. 

He doesn’t remember how many times he’s fallen into that deep sleep that seems to last for hours, days, weeks, but waking up always feels the same: disorienting, the world brand new, his body aching and heavy. 

He’s stopped responding to the voices that murmur in his ears and stares vacantly into the darkness, waiting. He catches himself muttering sometimes, incoherent fragments of sentences—a dry hiss of a laugh, a litany of pleas, sounds that just feel nice against his ears. 

Sometimes his siblings will respond to him. It’s Ben now—it’s him more often than not lately. He’s singing a song that’s quiet and aching and makes tears burn in Klaus’s eyes, Ben’s voice breaking when the first sob slips past Klaus’s lips. 

The song fades, and Ben draws in a shuddering breath. “Do you remember snow, Klaus?” he asks.

Snow. The word sounds familiar, the shape of it fluffy and cold in Klaus’s mind, something solid he can wrap his hands around. Something with a nice weight that he can throw. 

Glass shatters, Dad’s angry voice pierces through silence. 

_Unacceptable._

_Useless._

_Always a disappointment, Number Four._

A low whine trembles out of him, burning in his too-tight throat. “I’m sorry, Daddy,” he manages. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please—”

“Shh.” Ben’s voice is warm and gentle. Klaus can almost feel a hand smooth over his cheek, but when he reaches up to touch it, there’s nothing but air. 

“My favorite memory,” Ben says, a subtle waver in his tone, “one of the ones I like to hang onto—it was you, me, and Five against Luther, Diego, and Allison. A snowball fight during free time, Vanya was the referee. Remember?” 

Klaus remembers fighting. Missions. A black spot in his memory like a page exposed to a flame, embers eating away the text.

“We thought Luther’s team would win,” Ben goes on, “because they had Diego. We thought he’d be able to throw snowballs better than any of us.” There’s a smile in his voice now, warm in Klaus’s chest. “But he was the _worst_. I don’t think he hit any of us. And we had Five—he’d jump behind them and throw a snowball at the back of their heads, then teleport back to us before they could hit him back.”

The laugh that rattles in Klaus’s lungs is painful, morphing into a series of dry coughs. 

“We snuck out to Griddy’s afterward. Warmed up with coffee and hot chocolate. Allison rumored the waitress to give us all the donuts we wanted, and you, Luther, and Five ate them until you puked.” 

Klaus stares down at rainbow-sprinkled sick in the toilet, his stomach aching and his eyes burning while laughter bubbles inside of him.

He’s never felt worse. 

He’s never felt better.

His siblings are waiting for him out in the dining area, smiling at him, and Klaus feels more at home here than he ever has at the Academy. He wonders if this is what normal families feel like, if this it could be this way every day if only they’d been born ordinary.

He aches for the life he never had, eyes watering, and each breath feels just a little harder.

“Let go, Klaus,” Ben says gently, so gently. “I know you can. I’ll go into the light with you, okay? Don’t be scared.” 

Klaus draws in one last breath, lets it out as a sigh, and he feels a hand curl around his own. 

It’s dark when Klaus opens his eyes. 

It’s dark but it must be morning, because he can hear something outside. Distant scraping, something falling like small bursts of rain, and Klaus’s heart skips. 

“You have to make a noise,” Ben tells him, quick and urgent. “You have to knock or scream or something—you can do it.” 

Klaus slams his fists against the ceiling and the scraping sound stops, the world going silent. 

“Do it again.” 

Klaus does, harder this time, the impact vibrating through his bones. “Dad,” he tries, the word like a cactus in his throat, dry and painful. “Please, Daddy, let me out—Dad, _please_ …” 

The scraping starts again, closer now, faster, until something metal grinds against the other side of the ceiling. 

It’s morning. 

It’s finally morning. 

It seems to take years and no time at all for the digging to stop, for the dirt to be cleared away. It’s nothing after the night Klaus has had. 

There’s silence again, no more movement outside, and an old ember of panic flares back to life. He slams his shoulder against the ceiling and this time it moves, lifts and thumps back down with a plume of dust, and Klaus falls back down against the pillow, winded, exhausted. 

The lid of the casket opens slowly, almost hesitantly, and something slams into Klaus’s eyes with an almost physical force, piercing into them like knives, burning like nothing he’s ever felt before. He flinches away from it instinctively, pressing his palms against his eyes to block it out, heat bearing down on him from above. 

“Klaus..?” 

The voice is uncharacteristically small, afraid, but so very familiar. 

“Can I go home?” His voice sounds strange to his own ears, broken and quiet, fading too quickly into the open air. 

“I… shit. Fuck.” Five draws in a breath that’s shaking, almost hysterical, and Klaus can almost imagine the frantic way he’d rake his hands through his hair when he sounded like this. “Hang on, okay?” 

The feeling of a hand on his shoulder is foreign and terrifying, Klaus’s heart leaping into his throat as panic makes him fight against the hold, a scream wrenching out of him.

“Shh, shh, I’ve got you, just—just relax, okay?”

Klaus feels himself go weightless, sucked through space, and something in him seems to shatter, breaking beneath the force of the sudden movement, and he can't breathe anymore. 

It’s light when Klaus opens his eyes.

Too light, overexposed, burning his skin and his eyes. He screams, clawing at his face, rolling over to hide against the wall of the coffin—but it’s no longer there, too much space around him, like he’ll fall off the edge of the world if something doesn’t hold onto him.

Hands catch his wrists, gentle but firm, lowering them from his face. “You came back,” Five says, and he sounds relieved, he sounds terrified, and his voice breaks. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I wouldn’t have done that if—I…” he pauses, sucking in a sharp breath. “You can—you can’t die.” 

The world is blurry and out of focus, too much to take in, and Klaus squints against the searing light. 

He’s not at home. 

The sky is gray and infinite above him, hazy with smoke, reflecting dull orange heat. 

“You can’t die,” Five repeats, almost frantic, a dawning horror twisting his features. He holds Klaus’s hand to his face, presses his forehead against it, and Klaus can feel his breath hitching and stuttering and breaking. “I’m so sorry, Klaus, _I’m sorry_ —”

This is just another dream, another fragment, something far away that he can’t touch. It has to be, because Klaus doesn’t know how to live in a world on fire, a world that brought Five to his knees, crying at his side. 

Klaus squeezes his eyes closed, and he hopes it will be dark when he opens them. 

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn’t really find a way to work this in, but I like to think that Klaus didn’t really age while he was buried. Mostly because he shouldn’t be alive at all and he’s only being held together because of his powers, which doesn’t really seem conducive to like... actually growing. So it just kept him in stasis. 
> 
> (Not that it really matters, I guess, but if you’re not picturing exactly what I’m picturing, then what’s the point???)
> 
> **Update!!** This fic has a sequel now: [The Break of Day](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29457621)


End file.
